On a mission to recover a Federation informant on the Dominion world of Soukara, Dax is injured and Worf must choose between completing the mission or saving his wife. Meanwhile, O'Brien enlists Bashir's help to defeat Quark in a game of Tongo.

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Summary

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On Deep Space 9, tongo has recently been going well for Quark. He has won two hundred and six straight games in the last month. Even Dax can't keep up with him and she causes Worf to lose a bet against Miles O'Brien, although the Klingon claims that he would rather lose betting on his wife than win betting on someone else.

On their way to the Badlands, the two discuss plans about their honeymoon. Worf suggests Vulcan's Forge as a suitable location, however Dax shoots it down instantly as she doesn't want to spend her honeymoon in the Forge during Vulcan'ssummer. Worf easily concedes to Casperia Prime. After that, the conversation orients itself around a discussion about Worf's sense of humor and various habits and tolerance to change of the two of them – nothing very deep, but there's a sense of the bond that has developed between the two of them.

Back on the station, Julian Bashir arrives at O'Brien's quarters in a tuxedo for another of their holosuite adventures, but the chief has set his mind to a new challenge: to end Quark's tongo streak. When he realizes that he won't be able to change O'Brien's mind, the doctor accepts helping his friend.

Soon after they arrive at the coordinates in the Badlands, Worf and Dax receive a transmission from the Cardassian operative, Lasaran. The spy informs them that he is not secure any more and wants out immediately and that he has information on every single Founder in the Alpha Quadrant. He sends them a rendezvous point near a Dominion base on Soukara. Worf and Dax will need to land in Soukara's jungle, due to the Dominion's transporter scramblers, to recover the informant.

Back on the station, the doctor and O'Brien are finally ready to challenge Quark. Even though the Ferengis are reluctant to admit Humans to their table at first, they eventually accept. Eventually, there is only Bashir and Quark left at the tongo table, the bartender congratulating the doctor on his fast learning. Nevertheless, Quark has another card in his sleeve and soon begins a conversation about Bashir's past feelings for Dax and is able to distract the doctor long enough to drag him into a ruining confrontation against what finally reveals to be a total monopoly.

On Soukara, Dax and Worf slowly progress, but a patrol of three Jem'Hadar takes them by surprise. They kill all three, but Jadzia is hurt by a disruptor burst which leaves an anti-coagulant in her system. The two of them push onward but it becomes increasingly clear that Dax will not be able to make the rendezvous with the Cardassian agent. Worf leaves Dax behind in order to continue the mission. However, knowing that she urgently needs surgical care, Worf pulls back and aborts the mission.

Back on Deep Space 9, Dax gets the health care she needs. However, things do not go as well for her husband: his actions have led to Lasaran's death. Captain Sisko demands an explanation, and Worf tells him that as he went further and further into the jungle, he knew that he there was no way he could leave his wife behind, even though the intelligence that Starfleet has lost could have saved millions of lives. Captain Sisko tells Worf that the secrecy of the operation and Starfleet's desire to keep their intelligence activities under wraps will save him a court martial, but there will be a permanent note in his service record. As a result, Worf will almost certainly never be offered a command of his own after the incident. Sisko also issues orders that Worf and Dax are to be never sent on a mission alone again. However, off the record the Captain tells Worf that as a man who once had a wife, that if it had been Jennifer lying there in the clearing, he would have made the same choice.

Worf visits the recovering Dax in her hospital bed and tells her that he didn't complete the mission. Dax is sorry that he hurt his career because of her but Worf tells his wife that he isn't sorry as she is what matters, above his career and everything else and that if the situation arose again he would do exactly the same again. The two then reaffirm their love for each other.

Memorable quotes

"Worf, you're practically easygoing. What's next? A sense of humor?"
"I have a sense of humor! On the Enterprise I was considered to be quite amusing."
"That must have been one dull ship."
"That is a joke. I get it... it is not funny, but I get it."

- Dax and Worf

"A Klingon. Why do they have to send a Klingon?"
"I'm a Trill, does that make you feel any better?"
"Are you trying to be funny?"
"Not at all, he's the funny one."

- Lasaran and Dax

"Think of it as a challenge."
"That's your obsession, Miles, not mine."
"Do it for the latinum."
"Nice try."
"Do it for the satisfaction of the look on Quark's face when he's beaten at a game of tongo by a lowly hew-mon."
"Deal the cards."

- O'Brien and Bashir

"How are you enjoying your honeymoon? Are you suffering enough?"
"Almost."
"Anything I can get for you?"
"More pain, less cold. "

- Dax and Worf

"Genetically enhanced or not, you're only hew-mon."

- O'Brien to Bashir after his loss to Quark

"...I had to go back... and it did not matter what Starfleet thought or what the consequences were. She was my wife and I could not leave her."
"As your captain, it is my duty to inform you that you made the wrong choice. I don't think Starfleet will file any formal charges -- even a secret court-martial would run the risk of revealing too much about their intelligence operations. But this will go in to your service record... and to be completely honest, you probably won't be offered a command on your own after this."
"I understand."
"I have also issued new orders -- you and Jadzia are not to be assigned to a mission on your own ever again... and one last thing: as a man who had a wife... if Jennifer had been lying in that clearing... I wouldn't have left her either."

The B-story for this episode originally involved Rom, Nog and Prinadora. The plot involved Prinadora arriving on the station and claiming that she has come to reconcile with Rom and get to know Nog, but it turns out she's actually there to hood-wink Rom all over again. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

This episode's narrative structure is unique in Deep Space Nine insofar as the B-story (Bashir and O'Brien attempting to defeat Quark at tongo) ends just after the halfway point of the episode, and then the A-story takes over completely. Usually, A and B stories run concurrently for an entire episode. The reason writer Ronald D. Moore wrote the show this way was because he had been deeply unsatisfied with the results the last time he mixed a dark and serious A-story with a light-weight and inconsequential B-story; in the third season episode "Life Support". According to Moore, "After Jadzia gets hurt, it gets so intense that we didn't want to break out and be cutting back." In "Life Support", Moore had mixed an A-story involving the slow death of VedekBareil, with a B-story involving Jake and Nog on a disastrous double-date, and after the episode was completed, he came to feel that the farcical B-story really hurt the serious A-story. As such, he was determined not to make the same mistake again, so he purposely kept the B-story short and non-intrusive. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

After reading the script for this episode, Terry Farrell requested that Dax be killed now if she was going to be killed at all. At the time of production, she had already decided to leave the show following the end of season 6, as contract talks had failed to bring about a new contract for season 7, and she felt that having Worf complete the mission and leave Dax to die would create a very interesting character arc for him in the final season. According to Farrell, "I knew I wasn't coming back for the seventh season, so it was really written well, and it was the controversy of whether Worf should come back and save my life and not complete the mission, or complete the mission. But he decides to save his wife's life, and I remember thinking, 'Ah, this would be the perfect one to just end it'. I had asked not to be killed, but if you need to kill me because that's what you need to do, that would have been the perfect episode to do it because it would have been so much more for Worf's character to play in the long run, because he would have let his wife die, but completed the mission. Oh my God, what an awful thing to live with." (Crew Dossier: Jadzia Dax, DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) Jadzia was ultimately killed in the sixth season finale "Tears of the Prophets" by a Pah-wraith-possessed GulDukat.

As with such incidents as Worf's decision to kill Kurn in "Sons of Mogh", Kira's refusal to apologize to Silaran Prin in "The Darkness and the Light" and Odo's decision to allow an entire society disappear in "Children of Time", the writers saw this as another chance to take a character on an unexpectedly dark journey which would surprise the viewers. According to Ronald D. Moore, "I felt very strongly that we shouldn't let Worf off the hook when he's faced with a tough choice. So often in a story like this a character will get to have it both ways – his wife lives and he accomplishes the mission. They always cheat it somehow. But Worf was just not going to let Jadzia die out there in the jungle, so we decided to let him fail, to let that guy die and to let Worf take that hit. It represented a more interesting choice, and an unexpected decision on the part of the character." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Production

The jungle of Soukara was created by the Greens Department on Stage 5 on the Paramount lot. Because there were so many walking shots, the jungle was built as a large circle so that the actors and crew didn't have to keep stopping and switching sides every time they reached the 'end'. However, during shooting, the general consensus was that the Greens people did too good a job in constructing the oppressive jungle. According to art director Randy McIlvain, "We had designed small platforms to put all these trees on, so that the filmmakers could move the platforms out and get into the jungle area to shoot. But they added more and more plants, until we couldn't move the platforms! The plants and vines were all intertwined." As Steve Oster points out, "It got so difficult that we might as well have been on location." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Trivia

This episode reintroduces the notion that Bashir is still madly in love with Dax, something which has its origins in the very first episode of the series, "Emissary". Bashir's realization here that he still loves her however would finally pay off in the series finale, "What You Leave Behind", albeit with Ezri Dax as opposed to Jadzia Dax.

Apocrypha

The events of this episode are an important part of the novel Resistance, when Worf rejects Captain Picard's decision to make him the new first officer of the USS Enterprise-E- following Commander Riker's promotion and Data's death- because he feels that he does not deserve the command after his actions here. However, when Picard is briefly re-assimilated by the Borg, Worf nevertheless takes command, successfully destroying the Borg drones on the enemy cube and rescuing Picard, Doctor Crusher simultaneously managing to "infect" the Borg Queen with a "virus" that will prevent the Collective from creating a new one.

The events of this episode are referenced when Worf meets Ezri Dax- Jadzia's 'successor' as the Dax host- during the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy; with Ezri now a captain and Worf a first officer, she expresses concern that Worf's lower rank is the result of him saving Jadzia, but Worf assures her that she does great honour to Jadzia's memory with her career and that he has nothing but respect for her.

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